Lily Allen ‘entitled’ to apologise over Calais refugee camps

Helen Williams

Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott has said she does not blame singer Lily Allen for speaking out against the squalid conditions faced by refugees at the Calais camp known as the Jungle.

Allen apologised “on behalf of my country” after meeting a 13-year-old boy from Afghanistan who had risked his life trying to board UK-bound lorries.

Ms Abbott told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “Lily Allen is a good woman. She saw the conditions in the camp and was reduced to tears. I do not blame her at all. If you guys went to the camp, you would be reduced to tears also.

“If that is what she felt and that is what she wanted to say then she is entitled to say it.”

The teenager had been camped at the Jungle on the edge of the northern French port city for two months. He said his father lives in Birmingham.

Allen told the teenager: “It just seems that, at three different intervals in this young boy’s life, the English in particular have put you in danger.

“We’ve bombed your country, put you in the hands of the Taliban and now put you in danger of risking your life to get into our country.

“I apologise on behalf of my country. I’m sorry for what we have put you through.”

Allen wiped tears from her eyes at the end of their exchange, which was broadcast on the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme earlier this month.